Website Update Problem

I see now that the "Sort by Channel" link is revealed when you click the search icon. This is a confusing implementation that lumps searching and filtering together. These are two very different concepts that need to be kept separate.

Am curious to see how the red boxes might be explained to be an improvement.

Am confused about recent changes to the android app. Before, lesson lists appeared neatly down the screen, with accompanying image thumbs. Now each lesson in the list appears in a glaring red box with white text and no thumb. (Wearing sun glasses did not work)

Another issue is there doesnt appear to be any way in the new app to sort the lessons by channel e.g. I previously chose to list intermediate only and did this from within the app.

Personally, the app is now unusable for me and 90% of my Chinesepod usage is through the app. Is this format and layout going to persist?

Thanks

Dear Users,

These suggestions should be available now.

You also now have the ability to edit comments, but only for the first 24 hours after posting a comment.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Best regards,

-Alex

Hi there,

Thanks for the good work you do. I have occasionally been frustrated by the website but overall it's been fairly stable.

I have three general comments, (or complaints, if you prefer):

1) It seems to me that the servers are not always able to handle the load; sometimes the flash podcast player "freezes" a few seconds into the podcast and I have to reload the page. This has happened both in Boston, MA and Pattaya, Thailand.

2) Perhaps related to #1, I am not sure if the site is well supported in different geographical locations. The nature of this kind of site is it should probably be pretty international, right? I wonder how many servers are mirroring the content worldwide. In otherwords, some times when the site is slow and unresponsive (which does happen somewhat), I also wonder if I'm just not near a content server.

3) Finally, a small complaint: but for me, the new CSS on the lesson pages used to create two columns, a narrow left-hand-column for the podcast and some general topical information, and a wider right-hand column with tabs for comments, vocabulary, dialogue and whatnot. Since the update, right-hand column often is positioned below the left-hand column instead of to its right, especially if the browser window is not full size. This might be from some sort of switch to relative CSS positioning, but I prefer to see the two columns regardless of my browser window size. (Clarity update: in other words, if my browser window is too small, sometimes I see everything in one long column rather than two columns)

Phew!

Can you sort out the export of flashcard to anki now. I posted about it before but there was no response from you. Like i said before anki only shows the 2/3 pieces of information on the card. so for example the front of the card will have the chinese character, and the back would have the chinese pinyin OR the english translation. but not both. We need both on the back, the english translation and the pinyin. Your developer can fix this by merging the 2nd and 3rd column of information on the export. Can you please fix  this so we can use anki properly. 

Hurray! 

For everyone who uses Skritter and imports vocab lists directly from Chinesepod. It looks like they just got the login working again!  

None of the culture shows or videos are accessible by list format.  There is no dropdown option in the lists area, it only lists academic levels.  If you actually try to manually search for a culture show like "Dear Amber" or "Qing Wen" in Search, not all episoedes will be shown.  Even better, they will be in random order instead of by published date.

Which brings up another issue, none of the lists are able to be sorted by publication date anymore or any other method.

Oh and none of the video links will play anymore at least not on firefox.  When I click home it takes me to course instead of self-study even the settings are set for self-study. 

Actually, maybe it's easier to start listing things that weren't broken by the latest update?

Not related to the site update - but how about posting the 2013 rankings.

Lists are back! (Though auto-bookmarked lessons for subscribed channels aren't on there for some reason.)

http://chinesepod.com/library/list

Bring back the lists! Praise be to the lists!

I'm glad I'm month to month. I will not be renewing until LISTS are brought back!  

What happened to the Skritter tool? The two pads are seperated, forcing me to scroll up and down to look at translation and to write. That shouldn't be hard to fix!

I (and others) have already complained about the fact that the new layout makes it impossible to tell if you've already studied a lesson in the Library. Hopefully there's a solution for that in the works.

However...while you're at it, it's also kind of annoying that there's no way to tell which lessons in a Course are marked as studied when you view the Course in the dashboard. It would be helpful if you could reflect a lesson having been studied there as well...either by hiding it (as in the Self-Study dashboard) or by marking it (as in the old Library lists).

When will the system probably gets back to normal? Does it take a month or more than a month?

I can't subscribe or pay using paypal? I'm a new user, what happen to this site?

It looks like the data for the last level test that I took is missing, I'm not sure if this is true for everybody or not.

I also liked the old charting feature that showed test score progress, but the charts seem to be missing now.

Like many others, I'd also love to see the "list view" return again. I also use the vocab lists in Skritter, which doesn't seem to be working either, and would love to see that restored.

Actually if the entire old web site was restored back to what it was before all of the changes, I'd be a pretty happy camper right now :-)

Hello Everyone,

I realize some of you are frustrated, but please note that we are doing our best to update the functions of the new site design to fulfill all of your needs. We aim to provide as good a service as before, if not better. If you could, please clearly and with as much detail as possible let us know when something has gone wrong or does not function the way you would like on the site. We will monitor this conversation closely for your bug finds. Best regards,

ChinesePod Support Staff

I know it's not the best option (the best option is to fix the connection with Skritter), but in the meantime I'm just copying my vocab into Excel and then copying just the characters into QuickAdd in Skritter. You can copy the whole set of characters in at once. It's really not that much slower than importing through Cpod. The only downside is that you can't study multiple lists at once. You have to go in the order you add the words.

Please, please, please bring back list functionality with Skritter as soon as possible.

On the Skritter website I am unable to log in to download Chinesepod lists. Previously, I had learned words using Skritter before listening to the podcasts, which significantly helped with my learning. 

But now this functionality is gone - will it ever come back?

This collaboration with Skritter was an essential factor in my decision to pay for a Premium Subscription with Chinesepod, and without it I will most likely not continue subscribing.

I agree with Shenjian

I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this yet, but the Chinese Pod lists are currently unavailable for study on Skritter. When I attempt to log into my Chinese Pod account via skritter to access lists, I receive an error message-

ChinesePod Error:

Password is incorrect

(Yes, I verified that my password is correct, this is a system bug).

Please add this to your list of fixes.

Any chance of an update from CP advising what they are doing to resolve all these issues and by when? I want to be able to use CP again. 

For me, the two biggest issues are...

1. The size of the characters:  Reading the dialogue tab used to be easy and clear. The characters were a nice size to read comfortably. Now, I'm going to have to dig my magnifying glass out to study.

2. The search (for glossary and lessons) has disappeared. I used to use that quite a lot.

Not task section? In the past I was able to record and update oral test but I don't see the option any longer. Please bring this option back.The website is not fully on service.

Please bring the lists back.

Seconded. If you only fix one problem, please please please bring back the lists showing studied/bookmarked icons.

THe biggest problem being faced after you brought back the flashcard creation system is lists.

It is ABSOLUTELY important for us to be able to see the lessons we have marked as studied and the ones we havent. it would be even better to also display the actual % we got in the exercizes.

In the self study section there also needs to be this kind of format which shows the lessons completed and not completed. Preferably also showing test scores.

I think that you can guess, many of your full paying users are currently dissatisfied with the upgrade. I hope you can iron out these problems and restore our confidence in your services.